by Lili Valente
I shake my head. “N-no.”
“But you want them,” she says, casting a knowing glance between Jeffrey and me. “I can see it in the way you lean together. Two years, I think.” She taps the side of her nose. “Maybe sooner, though. The creative energy is strong between you.”
Jeffrey clears his throat, but he doesn’t contradict her. I don’t either, finding her words unexpectedly encouraging. If the woman is this bad at reading people, she’s not going to have much luck telling me what I want to hear.
Hopefully, that means she’ll settle for the truth.
“I’ve been r-reluctant to think that f-far in the future,” I confess, before launching into the briefest possible recap of what happened that day on the playground. Baba Dika listens intently, but with very little visible reaction aside from a soft cluck of her tongue as I describe the curse and a long, low hum when I finish.
We sit in silence for a moment before she says, “So, you’re the oldest princess? I thought you were all yellow-haired girls.”
I nod and gesture toward my head. “It’s a wig. Underc-c-cover today.”
Her lips turn down at the edges as she nods. “It’s good. The red matches the fire inside you.”
My first instinct is to laugh at the comment, but then I think again.
Maybe there is a fire inside of me. Maybe there always has been, and I’ve just been too busy hiding from myself and the future to notice.
“Have you heard anything like this before?” Jeffrey asks. “About a curse on the Rochat family?”
Dika’s eyes widen before she blinks quickly. “Oh, yes. It’s a common story among the Roma. A paramishta.” She nods my way. “You know…a folktale. A legend. But apparently, the woman who took you thought it was a true thing.” Her lips turn down again, sadly this time. “I’m sorry you had such an upsetting experience when you were young. That’s so hard for children.”
“Th-thank you,” I say, frowning as I push on, “b-but there’s m-more to it, I think.” I tell her about the prophecies the woman made, all of which have come true, finishing with the tragic history of my family’s firstborn children. “N-not all of them,” I clarify, “my father’s older s-sister is still alive, and there are a few others, but…”
Knowing sparks behind Baba Dika’s dark eyes, a flicker that makes me ask, “D-do you know something about that?”
“I might…” Dika’s full lips press together as she folds her hands in her lap.
“C-could you tell me?” I press. “Please? I can keep it a secret if I n-need to.”
“I was born outside this country, but raised in Rinderland,” she says after a beat. “My family still traveled then. My mother was a fortune-teller. She always had her ear to the ground, on the hunt for information, local gossip, anything that might make a read easier. Back then, the rumor was Princess Willa wasn’t her father’s daughter.”
My brows lift, but I’m not all that surprised. Aunt Willa, with her dark eyes and golden skin, looks nothing like the rest of our family.
“But if that were true and the curse is real, then Elizabeth’s father should have passed away at twenty-six,” Jeffrey says. “Since he was the true firstborn.”
“But the curse isn’t real, of course,” Baba Dika says pleasantly.
A little too pleasantly, perhaps?
I narrow my eyes, studying her face, wishing I was better at reading people. Another consequence of hiding in a tower my entire life—my family members are the only people I can read with any accuracy, and most of them are too eccentric to be good control cases for the population at large.
“What about the w-woman?” I ask, finally, when my attempts to read Dika fail. “Do you know anyone who fits her description? She’d probably be around your age by now. Like I said, I think she was in her late forties or early fifties when I met her.”
Baba Dika laughs. “Sweet girl. I’m eighty-seven this spring. My sixties are far behind me.” She rocks back and forth on the couch, launching herself into a standing position. “But yes, I might know someone who knows this woman. Let me make a phone call.” She reaches up, selecting a slim volume from the bookshelf on the wall beside us and handing it to me with a wink. “Take this with you when you go. There might be a few things inside that you’ll find interesting.”
My fingers curl around the book—Tales of Royalty and Romani—my pulse picking up again. “Th-thank you.”
“Of course.” She pats Jeffrey on the shoulder on her way across the room. “My granddaughter follows you on the computer. The youngest brother is her favorite, but I’ve always liked the serious ones.” She glances my way as she adds, “Never trust a man who smiles too much. He’s thinking with his teeth, not his heart.”
“S-sounds right to me,” I say.
She chuckles and moves away, eventually circling the checkout desk and ducking under the blue curtain behind it.
Hands trembling, I open the book to the table of contents, running a finger down the list of stories until I find what I’m looking for. I turn to the chapter on the Rochat curse, skimming the first few paragraphs. I’m just getting to the part about my ancestor stealing the Romani babies when Jeffrey says, “You didn’t tell her about the time discrepancy. That you assumed you’d been gone for hours, and your sisters—”
“I know. I didn’t want her to dismiss me out of hand.” My throat tightens as I turn the page to reveal a medieval etching of a woman with wild hair swirling around her shoulders pointing at a queen sitting on a throne made of bones. The title of the piece is “The Curse of Greta,” but the woman doing the cursing doesn’t look Romani. She’s wearing an elaborate dress and jeweled rings on her fingers, one of which I swear looks like the sapphire ring my mother hid in her girdle when the state came to collect the royal jewels.
Mother hasn’t pulled out her collection of girdle treasures in years, but I know where it’s hidden and approximately how much each piece would fetch on the black market. My mother would rather we starve to death than sell a single heirloom, but Sabrina and I won’t let that happen. If we have to hock our mother’s treasure to keep a roof over her head, we will.
I skim the second page of the story, looking for more information, while Jeffrey murmurs, “It seems like something she should know. If we want truthful answers, we should ask truthful questions.”
I reach the text beneath the picture, and my breath catches. “There are two versions of the story,” I say, running my finger beneath the words as I read faster. “One where the Romani cursed my family, and…”
Eyes wide, I glance up at him. “And one where my family cursed itself.”
17
Jeffrey
Before I can ask questions—or remind Elizabeth that you can’t trust everything you read in a book, especially a book of fairytales—Dika emerges from behind the curtain with a pink square of paper stuck to her finger.
“My little sister, Fawnie, thinks she knows the woman you’re looking for,” she says as she crosses the room. “But she travels, and Fawnie isn’t sure if she has a cell phone. If she does, my sister doesn’t have the number. But they’re one of the caravans that gathers to celebrate The Day of the Three Maries in the Wettingfeld Forest. I’m not sure if they’re still there, but it would be a good place to start looking. I’ve written her name and my cell number for you here in case you need any guidance that I can provide.”
Dika stops beside the couch, and Elizabeth jumps to her feet, plucking the piece of paper from the woman’s finger. “Thank you s-so much. I appreciate your help. B-but could you tell me, before we g-go…” She takes a breath and holds it for a moment before asking, “Do you think it’s real? The curse?”
“I made a promise when I joined this collective,” Dika says, bracing a hand on a barrel full of dolls that watch her with flat black eyes. “I swore to cultivate tolerance and respect for our community. Our people have endured so much, all because our ways were different. Because we were different. We’ve been persecuted, and tha
t persecution isn’t all a thing of the past.”
Elizabeth nods. “I know. I’m so s-sorry.”
“There’s no need to apologize, princess.” Dika gives Lizzy’s hand a squeeze before adding gently, but firmly, “But don’t ask me to speak of things that might add to the prejudice against my people.”
“Of course,” Lizzy says. “I understand I…” She holds up the book. “I’ve n-never read anything like this story before. N-not in any of my research. Is there m-more? Somewhere I can look for further information?”
“I’m not sure. Ours is largely an oral tradition,” Dika says. “It was safest that way. There were times when our language was forbidden. You could be jailed or killed for speaking it, let alone sharing Romani stories in writing.” She motions toward the bookshelf. “That’s the only book I’ve ever seen that tells the tale that particular way. You could reach out to the author. She might have more information, or at least a record of her source materials.” She pulls her cell from a pocket hidden in the folds of her skirt. “I would help, but it’s almost time to close, and I promised my grandsons we’d make iced moon cookies this afternoon.”
“No w-worries,” Lizzy says, circling around me. “We can find it online. Thank you s-so much for your help.” She opens the purse slung across her chest, pulling out a hundred-dollar bill and pressing it into Dika’s hand. “For the book.”
“I’ll get your change,” the older woman says, but Lizzy shakes her head.
“No, keep it, please. You’ve b-been such a help. I appreciate it m-more than you know.” She takes my hand as she asks, “Ready?”
“Yes.” I thank Dika and follow Elizabeth across the shop and through the green curtain to where we left our shoes, biting my tongue the entire time. I want to ask Dika about the time discrepancy, but Lizzy’s right. That part of the story throws everything into doubt, and…it doesn’t really matter.
One way or the other, our next step is still to track down this woman. This woman who might actually exist.
Elizabeth sets the book on the entry table while she zips up her boots, glancing up at me from her bent position. “This is good news,” she whispers.
“It is,” I agree, opening the door for her.
She pauses on her way through. “So, why do you look so worried?”
“I’m not worried,” I lie. I’m worried because all I’ve accomplished so far is to reinforce Elizabeth’s belief that she’s cursed. I hadn’t expected to find anyone who would tacitly endorse this idea, let alone to so easily pick up the trail of a woman who, when I suggested this plan, I wasn’t sure existed.
As Lizzy and I step into the sunny afternoon, shutting the door behind us, she lifts the pink piece of paper and reads, “Kaula Young.”
Her boogeyman has a name.
And I’m beginning to regret ever leaving our cabin in the woods.
18
Elizabeth
We spend the rest of the afternoon at a shady table in the outdoor courtyard of a coffee shop near the town square, scouring the web for information on both Kaula Young and the author of the Royals and Romani book, plus more about my family’s secret history, all with minimal success.
There’s nothing on Kaula, not even a birth certificate. The book’s author passed away fifteen years ago, and gossip about Rochat royalty remains far easier to come by than fact.
I do finally manage to find a parish register from the seventeenth century buried deep in the national archives. It lists all births for the years 1614 through 1656, when the parish church burned down. It includes a record that seems to support the second version of the story in the folktale book, the version that features Queen Gertrude’s sister, Greta.
“Here,” I say, nerves buzzing as I lean in to show Jeffrey my screen. “Just a few months before Gertrude made the decree about the Romani babies, there’s an entry from a midwife who says she delivered a baby at Rochat castle. A bastard.”
“At Rochat castle, but not necessarily to a member of the Rochat family,” Jeffrey says. I’m beginning to think that playing devil’s advocate is his favorite pastime. He’s been a wet blanket since we sat down with our coffees two hours ago. “Back then, there would have been dozens of servants living and working at the castle full time, if not more, as well as visiting family members and friends.”
“Yes, but at least this proves that there was a baby born in the castle. And it very well could have been Greta’s.” I scribble the date and the name of the midwife on the napkin I’m using for notes. “It’s a start. Have you found anything more about what happened to Greta after Gertrude sent her to Rome?”
Jeffrey shakes his head. “No, nothing. There are records of her joining a convent there, but nothing after that. And then the convent burned down a few years later, killing most of the nuns inside, so…”
I sit back in my chair, clutching my now cold cafe au lait. “So, she might not have lived to see if her curse worked. Gertrude’s oldest child would have still been a teenager then.”
“And the daughter didn’t die at twenty-six.”
“She might have,” I counter. “Some sources say twenty-three, some twenty-five. Maybe both are wrong. As we’ve established, birth and death records weren’t always meticulously recorded around that time.”
“There’s another part of the story that’s strange to me,” Jeffrey says, motioning toward the book between us. “Greta allegedly had this baby at twenty-six, after her betrothal to a Swiss duke was dissolved a year before for reasons that remain undisclosed.”
“Maybe he heard she had a secret Romani lover,” I say. “I’m sure people gossiped as much then as they do now. Probably more since they didn’t have television or podcasts.”
“But even at twenty-two or twenty-three, whenever the engagement became official, she would have already been considered an old maid. Women were married as teenagers in those times. Gertrude was seventeen when she married. Why wait so long to marry off her younger sister? Especially when Greta was allegedly such a beauty?”
I shrug. “Maybe Greta didn’t want to be married, and Gertrude respected that. Maybe they didn’t want to be separated. The book said they were close before the illegitimate baby thing drove them apart. Sabrina and I are older than they were at the time, and the past year has been hard for us, knowing we’ll never share a house again. Sabrina used to say we’d move back in together when we were old and raise pot-bellied pigs and hummingbirds, but…”
“Why pigs and hummingbirds?”
“Because it made us laugh,” I say softly, a sudden wave of longing for my sister tightening my throat. “Just one of our silly sister jokes.” I take a sip of my coffee, but it tastes more bitter than it did before. “I should call and check on her. That story in the Gallantia Post about the twin switch was pretty rough. And that picture of her was brutal.”
“She’ll be fine,” Jeffrey says. “Sabrina’s made of tough stuff.”
“She is,” I admit. “Not as tough as Zan, but they’ve both always been so much stronger than I am.”
“I think you’re strong. You proved it today. You faced your fear and powered through with very little help from me.”
“Thank you for that.” I set my mug down. “It was nice to fight my own battle for a change. My sisters and parents usually rush in to speak for me. They mean well, but sometimes I can’t tell if they’re doing it to spare me the embarrassment of stuttering. Or to spare themselves, you know?”
“I’m sure their hearts are in the right place. The people who love us usually mean well, even if their methods are inscrutable at times.” He crosses his arms over his chest, making his muscles bulge in that delicious, distracting way. If he hadn’t bulged so often in the past hour, I would have found that birth record at least fifteen minutes sooner. “Which makes the Gertrude and Greta situation feel even stranger. If they were close, why did things get so dark so quickly? Gertrude finds out Greta’s illegitimate child is half Romani and instantly issues a decree forbidding the bir
th of any new Romani children and a big fat round of kidnapping for the ones who’ve already been born? That child was Gertrude’s niece and half Rochat, and she murdered the baby in cold blood.”
“Allegedly murdered, but yes, we can assume all the babies were killed.” I shake my head. “Having a baby out of wedlock back then was a scandal, a huge stain on the family honor. And for it to be a half Romani baby…” I sigh. “I mean, even now, Romani babies aren’t adopted as quickly as babies of other ethnic backgrounds. There is still so much anti-gypsy sentiment around here. I can only imagine how intense that was three centuries ago.”
“But to turn on her own family like that,” Jeffrey says. “And then Greta repays the favor times infinity, or as long as the Rochat royal family endures. A death in every generation.”
“The royal family…” I murmur, tapping my boot on the concrete as my thoughts race. “So maybe babies that aren’t royal are spared? Maybe illegitimate babies, like my aunt, are immune to the curse?”
Jeffrey’s quite for a long time. I glance his way, studying him as he scowls at an empty sugar packet resting on the table beside his mug.
“I hate sugar, too,” I say.
He glances up, blinking. “Excuse me?”
“You were staring at that sugar packet like you were trying to make it catch fire.”
“Sorry. I’m a little fried.” He rubs his eyes. “Trying to make sense of this when half of me doesn’t believe in it is more taxing than I expected.” My lips part to remind him of the string of dead twenty-six-year-olds when he adds, “I agree that there is evidence to support this version of reality, I’m just…struggling.”